August Moon 2014 – Time, Time, Time

Today is the second day of Kat McNally’s August Moon. I have participated in her Reverb projects in December as well as her April Moon offerings, so it was a no brainer for me sign up for August Moon again this year. it comes at just the right time for me, I believe. There is a lot swirling around in my head and heart these days, and I’m looking forward to using the opportunity that August Moon gives me to work through those things that are rattling around inside of me.

What is it that you do now?

Today, we’re going to look at where we are, exactly as we are, right now. Grab a pen and a piece of paper; sit down in front of a screen with a keyboard; or dictate into one of those fancy smart phone apps!

Tell us what fills your weeks, days and hours.

Gosh. I think Kat must be living inside my brain because Sunday when I was struggling so mightily to get my morning pages done and trying to make sense of everything that I was feeling, one of the things that I actually wrote about was the way I spend my time, and how that needs to change if I’m going to make changes. I don’t know how many of you use your phones to keep track of your lives, but I’m a bit of a tech junkie when it comes to that. I have Awesome Note on my phone to help keep my various to-do lists organized with things prioritized and deadlines all a part of the deal. There are different folders for things that need to be done today, things that need to be done this week, this month, this quarter. Other folders with things for my blog. Another folder that is all about my health. All with the ability to check things off and feel satisfied that I’ve accomplished something.

I read an article several months ago, though, that said perhaps our to-do lists create more stress for us and really what we might want to do is keep track of the things we accomplish. And with that thought in mind, I recently re-discovered my I Done This app. Now, I’m sure that there are all sorts of things that the app can do that I don’t use it for. I simply use it to keep track of what I’ve gotten done. A reminder of sorts, so I don’t make it to the end of a week, and go…”What the heck happened here?”

A snippet of today’s I Done This entry

When I look back over my days, they look like this (& just so you know, I’m only talking about Monday – Friday here):

3:45 – 5:15 – Making coffee, catching up on email, checking in, drinking coffee, closing out the day before in my Some Lines Journal, getting my morning pages done, making lunch.

5:15 – 6:00 – Showering, dressing, applying spackle and paint, getting out the door…theoretically having breakfast in there. (On the weekends that happens with morning pages, but 4:00 in the morning is just too early for me to put anything in my stomach)

6:00 – 6:30 – Driving to work.

6:30 – 7:05 – Prepping for children.

7:05 – 8:00 – Waiting for children.

8:00 – 1:40 – Teaching

1:40 – 2:30 – Planning period, which theoretically should be spent grading papers, writing lesson plans, straightening up the room, preparing for the next day, but in practice is spent eating the lunch I didn’t have time to when the children were eating or just sitting down and letting the difficulties of the day wash away.

2:30 – 3:00 – Classroom clean-up, conferencing with colleagues, making copies for the next day.

3:00 – 4:00 – Running errands or heading home.

4:00 – 5:30 – Usually a nap or talking with Granny or attending to some issue that has come up, but this time is earmarked for napping.

9:00 – 11:30 – Getting ready for bed. Winding down. Meditating. Creating the next day’s to-do list, which involves moving things from one list to another, looking at the calendar, trying to figure out what comes next.

11:30 – 3:45 – Sleep. Hopefully.

As I look at that schedule and list of things that I do each day, I see a lot of time that gets wasted. That’s a lot of time that needs to be put to use if I’m going to make the change I feel like the Universe is telling me I need to start working on. I’m going to have to get much more efficient at doing what needs to be done when I have those moments of time (like now – my student removed himself from class, so instead of writing this, I should probably be working on getting the work that students did last week entered into my gradebook, which in all honesty, I started doing last week. I responded to journals and put those grades into the book but I didn’t do Friday’s or the new students).

I actually have *plenty* of time. I’m choosing to waste it.

Because it is easier to fall into a rut and do nothing than it is actually take the steps to walk out and meet the future.

Now, tonight I won’t be making my way home to take a nap. Tonight we have Open House, which means I am required to be at work until 5:00. I’ll use that time to get those grades done and to respond to journal entries, perhaps even grade some assessments if students are finished. That just means that when I get home, I’m going to be even more exhausted than usual. And when I get home, I’ll change my clothes and call Sweet Husband to remind me that we are supposed to be walking every evening. If he goes, great. If not, I’ll be headed out on my own. When I get back, it will be time for some dinner, and some other work that needs to be done. Maybe even time to shift the shower to the evening so I can sleep just a wee bit longer in the morning. Tomorrow’s schedule will be more structured and contained than even today’s. Because that’s what I’m going to have to do if I want to make these changes.

What do your days look like? Let me know in the comments or join us on this #AugustMoon14 challenge!

*and just a note – I’ve been a chronic insomniac since I can remember. Often that nap that I take in the afternoon, only works out to be about 30-40 minutes because it takes me that long to fall asleep. If I don’t get to sleep right when I feel it, then I’ve lost the moment and it’s not going to happen for me. And I’ve learned that while an earlier bedtime might be great, if I lay down before I’m tired, I don’t fall asleep and then I associate my bed with not being able to sleep. I’ve been told that skipping that nap might help me sleep earlier in the evenings, but it hasn’t worked out that way for me. If I miss my window of sleeportunity, then I don’t get to sleep. (on a different note – do any of you smell sleep? I know when I smell sleep, I need to lay down within like 5 minutes. If I don’t, I’m not going to sleep) All of these issues are hold-overs from a chronic nightmare that I had off and on from the time I was about 5 until the time I was about 25. The nightmare is gone, but the pattern of sleeplessness remains.

Comments

Wow, Jen! My first thought, on reading your extraordinary list was “She gets up at 3.45am?!” The second was how happy I was to see that 4pm to 9pm is time for you. This must be protected at all costs!
You are a very busy and productive person… and you have insomnia. You are truly incredible, you know.
I really loved your thoughts on lists. I am an avid list maker and recently have taken to pondering Danielle LaPorte’s recommendation that To Do lists can help bring you closer to how you want to FEEL if you start out with that as your intention. Food for thought, huh? xx

Unless and until I can find work that allows me the freedom to move to my natural biorhythms, which is to be awake until about 3:00 in the morning and sleep until about 8:00, I don’t know how else to get everything done. I keep thinking that I need to shift that walking thing to the mornings (so it actually gets done because some days life gets in the way), but I can’t get up any earlier or I may as well not go to bed.

I’ve been a list-maker for eons. I find that they are truly comforting. I like to break them down into minutia. Seeing the little pieces that make the whole makes things more manageable to me, although I know that for some people that just gets overwhelming. One of my CDFs is “Purposeful” so being able to cross things off the list, feeling like I’m moving somewhere, doing something, that there is a reason for my actions is huge for me.

Another CDF is “secure” so this idea of needing to create my own opportunities and path is terrifying. Truly. My background is quite unstable and I come from poverty. When I tell my students that for a time my father’s home was a utility shed with bare insulation on the walls and no indoor plumbing, that is the truth. We were never hungry for many reasons but when you talk about a bare, sparse existence, full of hard work with little reward or anything to show for it, that was it. I am terrified of being back in that place. Sweet Husband assures me that won’t happen; he’ll make sure that we are cared for – I just have to decide what I’m going to do, and we’ll figure out a way to make it happen. I’m incredibly fortunate to have that kind of support. As I told a friend last night, I’m in a position where I have a good 9.5 months to have a solid plan in place to make a move, so I’m hoping that I’m beginning to find some clarity.

Sounds to me like you have amazingly full days, but here’s to finding the time you’d like to create the changes you’re feeling called toward. I’m fascinated by your ability to smell sleep. Wishing you every opportunity to take advantage of that little sleep-is-arriving hedz up and wishing you only good dreams.

It’s really odd – it doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it’s almost like a race to the bed…unless it happens when I’m at work. *sigh* Poor Sweet Husband gets all excited when I’m frantically rushing to the bedroom and then terribly disappointed when he realizes that nope, I’m just going to sleep. 😉 It’s kind of like that wonderful old book smell, papery and slightly dusty. Reminds me of the stacks and stacks of paperback westerns my grandfather used to keep in the bedroom.

I taught for 15yrs so boy do I understand the time involved in prepping, grading, photocopying, etc. Chronic insomnia is misery and I only wish you positive things. Lists are powerful tools but they can also lead to a great deal of anxiety when we’re not able to cross things off and, as you say, moving things over from one day to the next. I know I don’t use daily lists for that very reason! And any teacher knows that there will always be things on the list that can’t get done! Perhaps approaching to-do lists in the same way as lesson plan objectives? Write an objective for things to be done by the end of the week, for example, rather than the day. Such as: “By Friday, I will have found no more than three useful resources for Unit 2 and will be able to identify how to integrate them in the curriculum”. I know when I would go looking for additional resources I would fall into a rabbit hole of “this is so cool!” and almost have too much stuff.

Anyway, this is obviously just a suggestion. I just know some of the things I would do when I taught that added much more heaviness to my load!

I actually have never really had much issue with my lists. When I create them I know that they are impossibly overloaded (I’ve tried to pare them down, but paradoxically that creates more stress for me). It’s almost as if there are all these things running around in my head and until I give them the space they demand, they won’t be quiet. Once they’re on the list – whether they actually get done in the time frame that I imagine for them or not – they leave me alone. I put it on the list and if it’s something that repeatedly does not get done, I figure that’s the Universe telling me it’s something that doesn’t need to get done. 😉

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I'm a teacher, writer, and photographer capturing the magical moments of life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast - putting my experience as a teacher and educational staff developer to work crafting stories that chronicle an experience well-lived.

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